My wife and I had to say goodbye to our lovely little guy a few weeks ago. His name was Bug. I’m missing him a lot today so I wanted to write him a little tribute because he deserves it. I hope that’s alright. I won’t be offended if this is against guidelines or anything. 

My wife adopted him from a shelter a few years before I met her. Apparently he was found wandering around Lebanon, Ohio with no collar, chip, or indicator of where he came from. They didn’t know how old he was, but estimated he was somewhere between 3-5 years. 

He wasn’t fixed, either, which is odd because he seemed like too much of a weird little terrier mutt to be a breeding dog. It led us to wonder a lot where he came from. He was so nice and mellow we thought he must have belonged to someone at some point, but he also was completely untrainable and occasionally not very well behaved (it was a testament to how funny and lovable he was, though, because no matter how much he barked at other dogs and people or marked his territory indoors we could never keep a straight face when we tried to be stern with him). I honestly think he might have been feral, and was just one of those dogs who had a loving disposition hardwired into him. 

My wife said he was hiding in a corner around a bunch of scary dogs at the pound. She said she took him into a room to try interacting with him, and he immediately went to her and started licking, and they were completely attached at the hip after that. 

The first time my wife invited me over for a date I took a picture of him while she was out of the room. I wanted to see her again very badly, but just in case I wanted to document him, because I thought he was the coolest

dog I had ever met. He had so much personality. He seemed like a little person. 

He was really smart, too, and would figure out manipulative ways to steal food, like acting disinterested or pretending to be asleep to lull you into not paying attention. He was a schemer. He would regularly climb on the table where we kept the cat’s food, eat it, and then bark until we came and helped him down. No matter how many obstacles we placed he found a way up. He really liked cat food. 

Anyways, I bonded with him as I fell in love with my wife. When we took engagement photos he was getting quite old, and we made most of the photo shoot as much about him as it was about us. The first photo in the series is us posing him in front of a rose bush. He got several portraits done and was in most of the pictures of my wife and I. We made it very clear to the photographer that we weren’t very concerned about staging engagement photos—we just wanted some professional photos with him as the star. 

He got frail in his last few years. He had to have most of his teeth removed, lost sight in one of his eyes, and had an enlarged heart that was pressing on his esophagus and making him cough. Sometimes he farted when he coughed and it was the most adorable thing, even though it was sad. 

We realized we were going to have a hard time saying goodbye to him, so we got him a puppy friend. They loved each other immediately. Even though he was old and slow he would still play with the puppy on our bed every night. They would wrestle and happy growl together and the puppy didn’t like going on walks without him. It was nice to feel like we were passing some of his traits onto a new dog, and so far he is incredibly sweet and funny just like he was, and reminds me of him regularly.

My wife was in the hospital recovering from a surgical mistake when he went into cardiac arrest. She is still having a very hard time with the fact she was not there to hold him when he was put down. I’m glad I was there, and tha he wasn’t alone in the apartment . I thanked him for being such a good friend before he closed his eyes. His ashes are on our bookshelf and they feel almost charged with his presence. Like you can feel that he’s in there. It’s hard to hold them but it’s also nice. 

Sorry I’m a very wordy person. I’m just missing him a lot today and wanted to give him a tribute. I don’t expect anyone to have read all of this. 

Thinking of my friend today.